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SUMMARY:Is Water H20? - Hasok Chang\, Hans Rausing Professor of History an
 d Philosophy of Science
DTSTART:20141118T194500Z
DTEND:20141118T211500Z
UID:TALK56162@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Adrian du Plessis
DESCRIPTION:Every schoolchild knows that water is H2O\, but it was a terri
 bly difficult thing for scientists to learn originally. The story of the c
 hanging ontology of water is not only fascinating in itself\, but illustra
 tes many important points about the nature of scientific knowledge and its
  development.\nThe story begins with the Chemical Revolution of the late 1
 8th century\, in which Lavoisier’s proposal that water was a compound of
  oxygen and hydrogen flew in the face of the traditional wisdom that it wa
 s an element. \nCavendish\, who made the first synthesis of water from hyd
 rogen and oxygen\, thought that hydrogen and oxygen were merely water with
  an excess/deficit of ‘phlogiston’. Priestley also defended the phlogi
 ston theory. Even the electrolysis of water in 1800 failed to produce a co
 nsensus. \nAgreement that water was a compound was not the end of the stor
 y. Dalton gave the formula of water as HO and it took half a century befor
 e consensus was reached on the modern set of atomic weights and molecular 
 formulas\, including H2O. \n
LOCATION:Meeting Room\, Clare Hall\, Herschel Road\, Cambridge
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